Tropical MBA: Entrepreneurship & Founder Lifestyle

The COVID pandemic saw many online businesses boom, especially those centered on E-commerce. But entrepreneurs running in-person events really took a hit. Today’s show focuses on one of those stories, and narrates how one owner re-invented what his company was doing by becoming a ‘Value Added Reseller’ (VAR) software service. Dan Taylor is the CEO of AppsEvents, a ‘Google for Education’ partner wh...

This show is a ‘drop in’ to the kind of conversations Dan and Ian have been having all summer long in their co-working space in Barcelona, as fellow entrepreneurs have come by the city. And today they’re joined by one of our favorite guests, AppSumo founder Noah Kagan. The idea is a simple one - let’s just have some fun, and hopefully useful insights, rating some of the popular business memes and...

One growing theme in the TMBA community has been the search for increased options for location independent families to provide education for their children. Traditionally it’s been home schooling, international or local schools, and very little in-between. But increasingly parents are coming together to try to create new solutions like pop-up schools, employing tutors and more. On today’s show tea...

‘Rip, pivot and jam’ is a recurring theme on this show. It’s a way of overcoming the pressure of needing ‘the best business idea ever’ by taking a model that’s working elsewhere and applying it in another field. And that’s exactly what today’s guest Justin Tan did when he founded his productised video editing service Video Husky. Through his previous freelance career in Facebook advertizing, Justi...

Who doesn’t want to maximize results, and spend less time - or just make better use of it - in their business? On this week’s show Dan and Ian discuss five possible ways to make this happen from their own experience growing Dynamite Jobs. They include reaching out to an expert practitioner in your field, someone who has experience and insight at the level you want to grow to, creating tight ‘backw...

The TMBA ‘summer in Barcelona’ continues with a long-standing guest visiting the city, and hanging with Dan and Ian. His name is Travis Jamison, founder of Smash Digital, and investor in numerous other companies. He’s a badass entrepreneur who exited his previous business AMZ tracker, a SaaS for Amazon sellers, for ‘a life changing’ amount of money, a story we told on this show. Today he talks to...

We’ve received some great email responses prompted by last week’s episode ‘The Europe Question’. So on today’s show Dan and Ian will be reflecting on some of those comments. They’ll also be mulling over a recurring dilemma posed by a listener, one which is very much in their minds as they grow ‘Dynamite Jobs’: “David and Goliath or Dynamite Jobs versus Indeed.com .. At one time you mentioned how j...

Recently Peer Richelsen tweeted ‘Ok, serious question: what keeps the average American (that can afford it) from moving to Europe?’. By the next morning he’d received hundreds of different responses. On today’s show Dan and Ian, who have just arrived in Barcelona for the summer, offer their thoughts about ‘The Europe Question’, a topic they think will be increasingly discussed as more mainstream A...

Last time Dustin Overbeck came on the show he talked about why he chose to live in Transylvania, Romania with his family whilst growing an agency and ‘Town Web’ which helps local governments in the US build and re-design their websites. Today he tells Dan about why he felt it was vital to institute structural changes to the way he worked and hire a General Manager, and about his new software busin...

Today Dan talks to one of our favorite writers Sam Dogan, the man behind ‘Financial Samurai’. And Sam has recently written a book called ‘Buy This, Not That’, laying out the ideas and strategies he learnt not only from his decade long career at Goldman Sachs but also investing personally and interacting with the many millions of visitors to his blog. This week’s discussion ranges from why the trad...

Do you remember when you had to pretend that you had a dental appointment just to be able to attend a job interview? Dan and Ian do. With so many more people working remotely, even within large corporations, those days are gone. And good riddance. But a listener emailed the show asking our thoughts about what they see as a more challenging aspect of the increasing numbers of people, especially Ame...

The ‘post-COVID’ location independent summer is beginning. We’re seeing more and more posts in the DC forum that begin: ‘Who’s in Medellin this month?’, ‘Anyone in Poland or the Balkans’. Traveling and navigating new cities, and regions is very much the theme of today’s show, which is a discussion for those thinking of visiting Bangkok, and Thailand in general, later in the year. And, of course, w...

The 4-Hour Workweek was, and continues to be, a life changing inspiration to many seeking more freedom in their lives through the path of entreprenuership. But, prompted by listening to a recent podcast featuring a conversation between its author Tim Ferriss and Cal Newport, Dan and Ian reflect on what they see as ‘the elephant in the room’ in the book, in relation to others seeking to emulate the...

Today’s guest, Sherry Walling, is a respected clinical psychologist who specialises in entrepreneur mental health. She’s also the host of Zen Founder, a podcast where she is sometimes joined by her husband Rob. Those who have listened to Zen Founder know that Sherry has been sharing movingly about the upheavals and losses she’s gone through over the last few years - in 2018 she lost her father to...

Unless you’ve been living in a cave recently (and if you have, hit us up because we’d love to hear about that), you’ll be aware that crypto has been on a wild (at the time of writing mostly downward) rollercoaster. As we’ve mentioned before, it is a volatile investment, especially when viewed short term. But today’s show isn’t about that. It’s about how crypto can be - *insert an important ‘health...

On today’s show Dan and Ian are reaching into the mailbag to reflect on some topics that listeners have asked about. These include an update on the incredible response to our upcoming DCBKK, things to consider when thinking about business models, and how to manage your net worth without hurting your brain: “I have been guilty in the past of overcomplicating my financial process with too many credi...

Today’s show challenges bootstrapped entrepreneurs to think about lessons they can draw from high-income private equity funded business, especially about structured forward planning and accountancy. But it also covers what lessons PE funded companies could learn from the other side of the tracks. This week’s guest is Jason Long, a valued member of the DC community, well known for being always open...

Lots of entrepreneurs and listeners to this show are inspired to create ‘The 4-Hour Workweek’ type businesses by founding e-commerce stores and agencies, creating money and value entirely online. Today’s guest, Alex Pantich, has chosen a different path with the business he co-founded. Upshift provides hospitality venues with vetted temporary W-2 hourly workers who are able post online the days and...

This week’s show is kinda a de-brief of our recent in-person event in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. Dan chats Jeff Pecaro, who has worked with us for nearly a decade, and continues to do an amazing job helping our speakers deliver the kind of presentations that our attendees tell us they want to hear: “It’s not a traditional business conference audience in the sense that they don't want to hear your t...

Have you ever wanted to get a regular review process going but just never get round to it because it seems so overwhelming? This show is for you. Dr Anthony Gustin, chiropractor, e-commerce entrepreneur and farmer, has been honing his annual review system for over 10 years. It’s available, completely free, online and has greatly influenced people like former AppSumo CEO, and recent TMBA guest Ayma...

One of the themes of this show has always been ‘learning by doing’, and evolving your businesses based on that. But what about when your circumstances change and, through necessity, that places different pressures on what you need to achieve? Dan first met Dana Lindahl a decade ago when Dana was just starting out as a 21 year old copywriter, creating a decent amount for living in Bali. In today’s...

On this week’s show Jeff Fruhwirth talks to Dan about how a failed foray into e-commerce, and a change in personal circumstances, caused him to pivot into real estate investing with little capital or experience. Today he has a portfolio of multi-unit buildings, which he’s expanded by learning about the hidden potential within different sorts of properties: “One of the best ways to make money is to...

This week Dan and Ian share updates about progress at ‘Dynamite Jobs’. Drawing on some sage advice from recent guest Ayman Al-Abdullah, they’ve been focussing on the ‘P’s that really matter, namely breaking through plateaus by building strong foundations through ‘product, promotion and process’. The idea being that will enable them to move on to the next stage in their business, from ‘player to co...

The last time Allen Walton was on the show he talked about the origins of his e-commerce business SpyGuy grew out of a difficult period when he was living in his parents’ basement struggling to make a living. Today Allen talks to Dan about some of the challenges he’s had which, despite the considerable success, has caused him to consider if it’s time to re-orientate what he’s doing and focus more...

One of the biggest challenges we discuss on the show is how to take businesses over the “five figure” hurdle. Today’s guest Ayman Al-Abdullah has done that in his time as former CEO at AppSumo, and he shares his major takes on achieving that with Dan. “You're essentially crafting your rock band. What more important job than who I'm hanging out with on a daily basis and hanging in the tour van, I t...